[password] rachel25
[position]39 24.200s 084 200w
[status] On passage to Valdivia, Chile

Colin here! Wow, what a busy Sunday. It started at midnight when I came on watch. We were trickling along at about 4 knots in the right direction which was nice after the frustrating calms of the day before.
Looked up to see the most amazing sky, just full of stars, and realised that, with the impending low pressure, this would probably be the last opportunity to use sextant to interact with them. It's one thing to see these heavenly bodies, it becomes more personal when you learn their names, but when you use them, measure their altitudes, bring their sparkling forms down to the horizon, stars which are millions of light years away, then the enormity of the universe and the connectivity of everything within it, becomes very, very real. Then comes the awesome realisation...., how small and insignificant I am, Ithaka is, this planet earth is. How miniscule my life is in the overall machine which is the universe, and which is progressing just as it should, either with me, or without me.
So Lucas and I took three star sights, Acrux (in the Southern Cross), Antares (in the constellation of Scorpio) and Regulus (in the constellation of Leo). You don't get much time for star sights, just the brief period of twilight when you can see both star and horizon. The stars faded but there were still wonders overhead, Jupiter and Venus. Lucas caught them, one by one, in the sextant mirror and brought them down to the hardening horizon. And finally we were left with our closest heavenly companion, the moon herself, hanging in the lightening sky, and we caught her and brought her, too, down to the horizon. What a wonderful way to greet the dawn.
Later on I decided to give the new (second hand)spinnaker another go. We had tried it a few weeks back, it had proved difficult to set, and I had concluded that it was too big and would require amputation once the sewing machine was back to full health. However, more thought had convinced me that we needed to give it another chance before committing to surgery. It is a traditional tri-radial symetric sail but we started by flying it from the stubby bowsprit in assymetric fashion with the sheeting position further forward than before. We unfurled it expecting the worst but it immediately filled and stabilised....Hmmm! The speed climbed from 3 to 5 knots. We adjusted the course up and down and it still hung in there, solid. OK, time for the pole. We rigged it, right down low, and transferred the windward clew onto it. Still good, we altered course, dead downwind and squared the pole back, still there and working. We gave it 4 hours to collapse, or wrap round the forestay, or do all the things that wayward spinnakers usually do but it did none of these, and we only put it to bed when we had to gybe. So, we'll not send it to the surgeon yet. Looks like it might be a good'un.

[speed] 5.5 knots
[heading] 105 true
[weather] Wind NW 11 knots. 0.5m waves. Sky 100% cloud. Baro 1018. Occasional drizzle.
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